As we ponder bailing out auto manufacturers, I can't help but think of this classic from Tom Lehrer:
Lots of industries are going to be in trouble over the next few years. Airlines, for example; everyone cuts back on travel when times are hard. Housing, of course. Appliance manufacturers. Hotels. Construction. Computers. Indeed, every company that depends on someone buying something from them--which is to say, every company--is going to be hurting as consumption contracts.
Are we going to bail out all of them? Where will the money come from to do this? And if not, how do we justify just bailing out GM. There is a rationale for bailing out the financial industry, and no one else: financial collapses have brought on collapses in the real economy (ok, arguably, RBC people), while it's hard to think of a large, diversified economy that has been driven into depression by a single industrial failure, no matter how big the company.
Then there's our nation's most vital business of all:
More importantly, what about the journalism industry? What about us - my friends and co-workers, and friends of friends and co-workers of co-workers, who've spent the last five years watching our business slowly circle the drain? Doesn't America need the New York Times as much at it needs the Chevy Cobalt? Isn't the Star-Ledger as important as the GMC Savana? Sure, GM employs roughly five times as many people as all all of America's newsrooms combined - but that just means that we'd be much, much cheaper to bail out! GM needs $25 billion, but we'd settle for, I dunno, five billion? Pocket change, in other words! And we'd be so, so grateful. If you think your coverage couldn't get more lovey-dovey than it already is, Mr. President-Elect, the magazine and newspaper editors of America stand ready to prove you wrong - and all for a fraction of what it took to bail out those ingrates on Wall Street.
Now, you know that normally, I'd take the libertarian side and argue against this. But the news business is special. Without us, you wouldn't know anything. Besides, it provides millions of low-paying, insecure jobs to overeducated yuppies who are going to move back home, into your basement, if you don't do something, quick.
And the news business is the other industry that can, all by itself, send the real economy into a tailspin. You think you're worried about a depression now? We could make you really depressed. I'm not threatening, or anything; I'm just saying, it's a nice country you've got here. It would be a real shame if someone convinced consumers to stop buying Blu-Ray players and shift their savings into canned guns and ammunition.
Which reminde me of another Tom Lehrer classic:
Hey, if that's what The One thinks is positive change for the economy, and correct the "failed Bush policies," I say, "Knock yourself out, Barack". The GOP will gladly take back the House in 2010, and the Senate, too.......
Without us, you wouldn't know anything.
Is that better or worse than knowing the ridiculous falsehoods, groupthink, and half-truths that pass for "information" these days?
"Are we going to bail out all of them? Where will the money come from to do this?"
Where's the money coming from for Ol' Hank's $700 billion? Or the two, or three, or four, or however many $100 billion stimulus packages Pelosi is proposing? Or the $50 billion Obama wants to bestow upon the automakers (via a "cars czar"--just wrap your head around that one). Or the $2 TRILLION that the Fed has reportedly spent? Where will all the money for universal health care that liberals are certain will appear next year--just look at The New Republic's website--come from?
Does anybody know? Does anybody care?
-- Without us, you wouldn't know anything.\
you'll have to convince me that the "news" industry tells us anything very useful now.
Megan, you shilled for a bailout of the financial industry just a few weeks ago. Now the auto companies want their piece. The, "wow, I didn't see that coming" aside, it seems to everyone with any sense that you have indeed arbitrarily chosen who does or does not deserve a bailout.
Aren't you even the slightest bit embarrassed about your hypocrisy? Or have you even considered the fact that your personal experiences (or lack thereof) have formed some sort of extremely flawed opinion of the importance of financial vs industrial to the well-being of the nation.
Tom Lehrer? Did your mom ghostwrite this post?
Hey, don't be bashing Tom Lehrer!
"If you think your coverage couldn't get more lovey-dovey than it already is, Mr. President-Elect, the magazine and newspaper editors of America stand ready to prove you wrong"
Megan, you think that a bailout of the journalism industry (not really as centralized as you make it out to be in this sense) would be constructive for the country. The above may be a joke, but how far do you think grateful journalists will take their unbiased reporting of a government that saved their jobs and is their de facto employer?
> overeducated yuppies who are going to move back
> home, into your basement
I'll check with my wife, but I suspect she would not welcome you :-(
Where's the bailout for the comic book industry? Comics are selling a fraction of what they did in 1992. They'll only do worse with the coming price increase from $2.99 to $3.99 per book. Thousands of writers, artists, and editors could be out of work.
I'd yell Homer Simpson's famous "Save me, Superman!" comment, but it'd be too ironic...
No bailout for comic books? Not important? Nobody wants those products? Well, good. I agree. And neither should most other industries--cars included--for the same reasons.
"It would be a real shame if someone convinced consumers to stop buying Blu-Ray players and shift their savings into canned guns and ammunition."
Canned guns? Heh.
Seriously, comparing the dismal Blu-Ray market penetration levels and the boom in gun and ammo sales since Obama's victory, it looks like the media has already done that...
The only good part of this economic calamity is that I can hope to one day watch the former employees of the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC and Newsweek living in Barackvilles and lining up for soup kitchens. Of course, I will also have lost my NY job by that point but can fall back on my prior skill set and become a mercenary? I wonder what other skills Evan Thomas has?
Dear Megan,
I don't think your present job is safe. That said, I suspect you have enough connections in DC not to starve.
"There is a rationale for bailing out the financial industry, and no one else: financial collapses have brought on collapses in the real economy (ok, arguably, RBC people), while it's hard to think of a large, diversified economy that has been driven into depression by a single industrial failure, no matter how big the company."
This is the problem.
Megan, don't you see that the only logical extension of this statement being true is that everyone will work in finance, because you can never, ever lose since you will always be bailed out.
It is precisely BECAUSE people have this attitude towards finance that finance is the one sector that can bring about a collapse in the real economy. It is a sector perennially over-inflated with subsidies and the expectation of a bail-out. This is precisely what makes it so "systemic".
If you made it clear that money is an industry like every other industry, soon enough, anyone reckless enough to endanger other people will go bust, along with anyone dumb enough to trust them. In no time, finance will be like any other industry with precisely the optimal amount of riskiness and interconnectedness that would allow the government not to worry about bailing-out anyone.
Here is a canned gun:
http://mossberg.com/products/default.asp?id=28§ion=products
The Mossberg JIC - Just in Case.
Nice satire, Megan.
That so few commenting "get it" says a lot about the echo chambers, both left and right.
i get that she's being satirical/facetious. the best part to me is that her premise is so shaky...
Hmmmm.
"No bailout for comic books? Not important? Nobody wants those products? Well, good. I agree. And neither should most other industries--cars included--for the same reasons."
Whoa! Whoa!
What about a bailout for the makers of Magic the Gathering cards!? Eh? Too elitist huh?
And Pokemon!
If Pokemon fails then children, and very strange 30-40 year old men, will be crushed all over the world!
ROFL This is brilliant! Thanks Megan. Ya hit it on the nail :-))
(For the humor challenged, it's satire)
My parents raised me on Tom Lehrer. Its all that we ever played on our family roadtrips. I grew up thinking everyone my age (I'm 30) had every song of his memorized. The Lehrer references in this post made me happy and I wasted a good half hour watching Lehrer YouTube videos.
And, a note regarding the first comment. Am I the only one who immediately rolls their eyes and stops reading a comment the second I see the phrase, "The One" in reference to Obama? The irony is that such commenters up until recently were probably accusing people of having, "Bush Derangement Syndrome". Its all quite silly and juvenile (as were terms like "Chimpy" for Bush).
Why is it that right-leaning folks get almost apoplectic when "the rules" get violated?
OMG, gay marriage! We'll have man-on-dog sex, next!
OMG, GM liquidity - we'll have economic anarchy in the next months!
So, to short-hand it:
Lots of industries are going to be in trouble over the next few years. Airlines, for example; everyone cuts back on travel when times are hard.
--
A service industry that will be handled via consolidation and the huge tailwind from falling jet fuel costs.
Housing, of course.
--
Preventable foreclosures, preventable foreclosures, preventable foreclosures.
+
Green revolution (pull forward some demand)
Appliance manufacturers.
--
let's hear what they have to say, before making a decision...
Hotels.
--
Not capital intensive enough, but let's hear any creative plans they have ...
Construction.
--
Oh, yes! Should have been done last April/May. We have a serious residential housing imbalance and, while the Commerical one doesn't look so bad, a little could go a long way at the margin to shore up construction employment and prevent the "worstest" kind of downturn.
Computers.
--
Part of the re-build our schools effort? There are some parts of the country that could really, really, really use some school building dollars...
I think McCardle thinks she thinks this is satire. In reality, this post demonstrates pretty clearly that she's a self-hating pseudo-journalist who deep in her own dark heart knows she's not a productive member of society. She contributes zilch. If she held a Galtian strike, no one would care.
...I'm not threatening, or anything; I'm just saying, it's a nice country you've got here. It would be a real shame if someone convinced consumers to stop buying Blu-Ray players and shift their savings into canned guns and ammunition.
I know it was satire but as it happens US consumers have shifted enough of their savings into ammunition for their to be significant shortages of ammo.
Tom Lehrer was (is?) a genius.
Having trained as a chemist, my favorite is "The Elements":
"There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium..."
A good one at parties after a few beers.
Oh, and our economy will completely screwed after Barack and his Demo friends have their way with it for a couple years. Anyone who can't see that is a fool.
Money and wealth don't fall out of the air; they have to be generated with great difficulty by risk-taking, hardworking, gutsy, self-denying people. A lot of them are planning to "go John Galt" for a while, including me.
I am NOT going to pay over 50% of my income to various governments. I can avoid generating much economic activity for 2 years. And I hope a lot of employers have the sense to lay off Obama voters first when the time comes.
All you semi-skilled overpaid tattooed urban "knowledge workers" who thought it would be JUST SO COOL to have a black president are going to learn how the world works.
Yes, Tom Lehrer is still with us... I think he's professor emeritus somewhere... And, thanks, Megan for letting start my day off with some Lehrer! If you want to randomly insert any of his songs in any future posts, I won't be complaining...
Excellent post.
Wow Chester, you are soooo right. I mean it's obviously the Democrats fault that the economy is melting down right now.
After all they have been governing uninterrupted for a large part of the last 30 years.
Oh wait... that wasn't the Democrats? Oh... it was the Republicans? Hmmm...
I'm 40. Who's Mr. Lehrer?
Other than the people who are paying for them, who won't get bailouts, especially under Obama and two almost-completely-his two houses of Congress?
If Obama gets in trouble for Rezko and ACORN stuff, will it be too late to write in Ron Paul? At least he had enough spine to say "No" to spending some of the time.
Recall the video of Bush looking under the White House cushions for those MWD? Funny, like SNL funny: not at all. I think Bush was actually looking for a veto and the huevos to use it.
Chester White, we already know how the world works. When Democrats are governing, the economy booms and everybody makes more money. When Republicans are in power, the economy suffers and everybody makes less money - except the elite 1% who start wars so they can profit off of them. Meanwhile, stupid people like you go around telling everybody that black is white and the world runs on magical conservatism.
Go die in a fire, please.